


To Perceive Together

by Dreaming_in_Circles



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Computer/human integration, S1E12: Bad Wolf, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreaming_in_Circles/pseuds/Dreaming_in_Circles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock pauses in front of the building, ignoring the slight London drizzle. He clears his mind of the usual blues and blacks and red and grays, settling for a bland white. Not light white or any of the other two dozen shades white can be; just plain white. It won't matter in a moment, but he likes to try to start with a clean palette.<br/>Sherlock pushes the door open and strides into the building like he owns the place, brushing by the distracted security guard without earning a second look. He heads straight for the stairs, and seeing the cold metal-and-concrete structure starts an ache in his chest and a splash of persian blue across his white canvas. As the train of thought develops, a stab of blood-red is added, and Sherlock has to fight to keep his composure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Perceive Together

**Author's Note:**

> The italics are Sherlock's thoughts, and the bold is the other person's. I can't tell you who or it'd be spoilers, but now you know. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> I have no idea where this came from, but it's here now, so if anyone has anything they'd like to say, I direct you to the comments. It was hard to write, so I'd love to know if it worked or not. Thanks!

Sherlock walks through the dark facility without making a sound. He's dressed as he always is: nicely, professionally, just like his older brother had taught him. The Coat - for there is only one like it - is settled comfortably over his shoulders.

The hallway is long and concrete and cold. There's not dust, no spiders, nothing like that. It's unearthly silent and completely abandoned as Sherlock ghosts down the hallway that is lit at ten-meter increments with bare bulbs.

Doors lead off infrequently and irregularly. They are solid metal, most likely, and just as cold as everything else. Sherlock can actually see his breath when he passes under the lights. He has no clue where the doors lead; he will never know what other horrors are contained down here.

Sherlock takes a deep breath and tries to squash the sudden feeling of tears that springs to his eyes and he ignores a spike of blue. The ache in his chest becomes all the more noticeable for having been acknowledged for a tenth of a second. The cold air helps clear his head, and Sherlock is momentarily glad he's so far beneath the Earth's surface.

He stops in front of a door that looks no different from the rest, but he knows this is the right one. He just _knows_.

The handle yields under his touch and the door swings open compliantly. Sherlock sweeps into the room. Empty, as always, at this hour. But there is a presence there, even if no one else registers it as even remotely human anymore. Sherlock pushes the door closed behind him and slides a near-by chair under the handle to prevent it from opening. He needs privacy, and Sherlock isn't referring to himself.

He crosses the room steadily but not quickly, both hating and longing for this moment, his white corrupted by sharp blues and muted oranges. He can't take his eyes away from it.

The object of his attention is braced up where the fourth wall of the room should have been. Instead, there was just a large, open space housing... it. _Him?_ Sherlock wonders. Suspended in midair, just within arm's reach in case repairs were necessary. Wires running from every conceivable place, each with their own function. _There must be nearly a million of them_ , Sherlock thinks. _No wonder they needed intelligence._

A gray jumpsuit is draped over a sickly, neglected frame, far too thin to be healthy. The skin covering it was dry, cracked, and and unearthly pale with a slightly green pallor that had nothing to do with the neglected lighting. Unseeing eyes stared out into the room, clouded and dry. Sherlock can no longer see the pupils. The mouth was open and the quiet rasp of air through it was the only sign this this was still alive in some small way. To think that this shell of a person was responsible for the British Government.

 _This thing is a person,_ Sherlock thinks deliberately, a blue river pouring from his very soul, streaked with red. _This_ thing  _is so much more than this._

He stretches out a cold, shaking hand above his head. It always quakes and he can never do anything about though he's sure it has nothing to do with the cold. His own skin appears a rosy red next to this thing's. Sherlock's hand hovers in space, bare centimeters away from the thing, slight tremors running through it. Then some force - unknown even to Sherlock - reaches out and his hand slides gently along the thing's cheek.

The skin feels so strange to Sherlock, and so cold. The ache in his heart grows, river blossoming into a flood, but he refuses to cry.

The thing starts, sucking in a deeper breath, eyes widening. The expression reminds Sherlock so much of fear. _No, not fear. Terror._

 _Calm._ Sherlock thinks, spheres of purple accompanying his message. Single-syllable words were always the best he could do at first.

**...**

Sherlock can feel the presence there even if no words have yet come across. Their telepathy was always somewhat irate, and all of... this had only made it worse. Though when they could get it working, oh, it worked, Sherlock remembers with a flash of sepia.

 _Me._ Sherlock continues, sliding his hand down the the neck in a continued effort to comfort, allowing a little silver through. He decides to try two words and more purple. _No fear._

There's a long pause, then; _ _ _ _**Brother mine.** ____ An answer comes smoothly, and caresses Sherlock's mind, and gust of purple wind dusted with silver and gold. At times like these, Sherlock's not sure who is comforting who.

He gives in, like he always does at this point, and steps up to the lip of the cage that contains the body and mind of his brother. He wraps his arms around Mycroft's neck and presses their foreheads together. Mycroft's whole body is freezing cold and feels cracked and rough to the touch. 

_Feel me, please._ Sherlock silently begs, and doesn't care if his brother hears him or not, brooding blue and pained persian red.

 **I feel you.** The words come across, and a trail of deep pain and sadness comes with it, flaring up behind Sherlock's eyelids like black and blood-red monsters in the night. But a little respite, a little relief also crossed, and serves as a light in the dark. A light white against the black demons.

Sherlock knows what these visits mean to his brother. What real human contact does for him. How physical contact grounds him; keeps him from floating off into that space of numbers and electric green that now commands his brain.

And Mycroft knows what these visits do to Sherlock. How they rip open the old wounds, and rub salt in them for days after. How Sherlock goes home and screams and hits his head against the walls in an attempt to get rid of the barriers that now surround his consciousness. The surgeries weren't supposed to build walls, but they had anyway, and now physical contact was the only way to reach through them. And while Mycroft was swimming in more contact that he could ever hope to process, Sherlock was locked in a prison, locked in his head. It was really no wonder he had turned into what he was today.

So he when he can, when the contact is established enough, Mycroft floods Sherlock with all the hope and joy and relief and respite his little brother's visits give him. He doesn't know, but he hopes this makes it all more bearable for Sherlock. He hopes Sherlock keeps that relief and uses it when he goes home, manipulates it to ease his own pain. Because for them, emotions like anger, relief, pleasure, joy, all of them, were tangible. Something they could hold in one space in their head and manipulate.

_I miss you._

**And I you.**

_Prevent any wars recently?_ Humor, bright and bubbling, comes from both sides.

**Just one or two. Catch any serial killers?**

_No. London's criminals seem to be all simple-minded fools. Everything Lestrade gives me is easy._ Gray boredom and and bitter jasmine-yellow disappointment swirls through Mycroft's head, draping itself over everything lazily.

There's a long silence where the two merely trade emotions. Dark brown worry, sharp blood-red pain, steel-blue sadness, blue-gray emptiness.

 _Want to try again?_ Sherlock finally asks.

 **I don't want you to hurt yourself again.** Mycroft responds with a mellow undercurrent of maroon worry.

 _I've got a flatmate. He makes sure I eat semi-regularly and get a decent amount of sleep. Let's try again._ Sherlock can't stop a burst of orange excitement and navy-blue need.

 **Okay.** Mycroft agrees, his maroon river now slightly tainted by eager orange, too.

Sherlock sends him what they call a firework of happiness: bright and cheerful oranges, reds, yellows, whites, lights. Mycroft's river is now too full of similar colors for the worry to be visible.

Both brothers concentrate hard on the link, Sherlock pressing their heads together so hard it hurts but neither notices nor cares. They walk through the instinctive steps that used to be child's play to them, but now they have to fight tooth and nail each time. It is the walls that had been built around Sherlock, and the walls he'd instinctively built himself. Mycroft could feel Sherlock's fire-colored anger and frustration.

And then it works. Mycroft looks down at his hands, and his feet standing on solid ground, legs supporting himself. He looks back up and sees Sherlock in the third person for the first time in years. He can see the grin on his younger sibling's face, and can see the bright fireworks that explode behind him. And Mycroft runs. He runs toward Sherlock, yes, but this right now is about the running. The wind in his hair and the feel of legs pounding, lungs pumping. Sherlock runs toward him and they collide in the middle, laughing and smiling, a bouncing cloud of bright colors surrounding them.

Sherlock can't stop laughing. They did it. It's done. Finally, they _did it!_ They created a separate reality, held in space, in consciousness, with just the power of their two minds. There had been others with telepathic abilities, but none had been able to hold a second reality with just pure will and mind-power. This, more than anything, Sherlock knew, demonstrated the pure genius of both him and Mycroft. Just the fact that they could do _this._

Sherlock grins and grips his brother tight. He's tall and strong and healthy, with smooth skin and a healthy pallor, just like right before the surgery. Existing in this temporary reality, Sherlock lets himself forget about everything else, everything "real." It's a blissful feeling.

 

Sherlock closes the door behind him and mentally checks the time. He's been subconsciously counting seconds and minutes to make sure he didn't overstay his visit and get them both into trouble.

His hand lingers on the door handle even though his back is to the door. As much as he dreads coming before he walks into the room and hates himself for going once he's home, the visit itself is to die for. And that's exactly how what happens next feels.

Every time he and his brother make the connection, cracks appear in the walls, but Sherlock can never stay long enough to break them down completely, though today he believes they came close. Some small, irrational part of him had been hoping that the second reality would have been able to last, or at least create a strong enough bond that he and Mycroft would have been able to talk without touching, but it wasn't true. Sherlock had tried, but nothing came of it.

He's about to leave when he becomes aware of a single purple thread of thought drifting about in space. He reaches out with his mind - stretching to reach past the barriers - and grabs it.

**Thank you.**

Sherlock's eyes close and a single tear rolls down his cheek. _MYCROFT!_ He mentally screams. _I need you!_

But there's no response. Sherlock can hear his cry echoing off the walls of his prison. His legs give out and he slides to the ground in a crumpled heap. He wants go back into the room, touch his brother, let Mycroft make it all better like he could when they were children. Phthalo blue need and alizarin crimson pain bubble up and burst behind his eyelids.

Sherlock gives himself ten seconds, then stands, brushes off his coat, and strides down the hallway. The tear has long left his face, which has been composed into a perfect mask of neutrality. Bland white coats his mind and hides the entrances to the painful parts of his palace. The walls are back, vague colorless shadows looming just out of sight. Sherlock takes a deep breath and doesn't look back.

A single fragment of memory drifts across his mind at random, and he doesn't sweep it away. A single purple thread and a whisper of **thank you...**


End file.
